Marketing in the Business Planning Process
We know marketing is a frustration to many business owners. It’s “a black hole” –you have invested and it hasn’t delivered what you expected. That’s what we hear when we start working with businesses.
There is a step in the process that we see most businesses miss – it’s the marketing strategy piece. So many businesses just dive into tactics, which don’t work unless they are strategic and connected to a plan. What do we mean by that?
Tactical Implementation: Tactics are where most businesses start their marketing investment. Tactics look different for every business – for yours they could be advertising, social media, exhibitions, digital – there’s a whole host of marketing tactics that any business can spend their money on. It can be wasted if there’s not a marketing strategy in place.
Marketing Strategy: Marketing strategy is the decisions that connect your marketing investment to your business growth and it informs where you invest your marketing money in terms of tactics. Marketing strategy looks at topics like your position in the market, who your key stakeholders are, how you grow revenue and why your customers work with you. They are decisions your business needs to make before investing any money in tactical implementation.
Business Plan: We often get asked why marketing needs to understand the business plan. If you don’t understand how the business wants to grow, you don’t know how to plan the marketing. If your business is launching a new product/service or expanding into a new geography or wanting to grow into a new sector, unless marketing knows that, it cannot direct marketing accordingly.
Operating Market: We find understanding the operating market is a bit hit and miss for many businesses, and it’s critical. We often find businesses know who their direct competitors are but then they don’t really know the size of the market, innovation and technology that may impact on growth, government policy or economic trends that could make them succeed or fail. Understanding the ‘pond you are fishing in’ gives you fantastic insights and we know it helps businesses make better decisions.
If you tick these four boxes, your marketing has a much better chance of success. If you’d like a conversation about building marketing strategy for growth, contact teams@hfbgroup.com.au